


I won’t burst into flames

by middlemarch



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Endearments, F/M, Names, Post-Canon, Questions, Religion, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 15:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20726744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: After the morning, the sermon, the bus-stop. Afterwards.





	I won’t burst into flames

There were so many questions she could have asked. In addition, maybe, not instead of what she had. They popped into her head at the most inopportune moments, like when someone was asking if the price of a bacon sandwich changed on Chatty Wednesdays or when she was sorting her laundry, putting aside the lacy delicates in a mesh bag Claire had given her as a Christmas gift. A real gift, not a joke, one of a set _as you’re sure to lose one_. Once when she was trying to paint her pinky toenail a vampy deep red and another time just as the vibrator was about to deliver on its hype, the scent of her solitary arousal ripe, devastating.

_Why must you be Catholic? Is it truly the clothes?_

She saw him twirling in an embroidered red velvet chasuble, except that she’d never actually seen that. It would’ve been fucking hot because his cheeks would have flushed and the smile on his face… It would have been almost as appealing as his stern expression when he’d said _Kneel_. He’d found something for himself at the Quaker meeting, she’d noticed that in his expression in the half-second it took her to stand up and blurt out something about her tits. The Light, that’s what Quakers talked about, which made about as much sense as anything did, given the sun and candles and how a prism fractured energy into color. He wanted rules but he broke them. He broke them and he risked breaking her, breaking his own heart. 

_Why do you drink so much if you’ve found your calling?_

G&Ts, the bottle of Scotch, of bourbon, the taste of an oaky red on his lips. His eyes, slightly unfocused, seeing her as no one else had. If God was necessary and sufficient, if the liturgy was so fucking beautiful it made him weep, why did he carry the reek of spirits like a bloody fruitcake or a properly made mince pie that Claire would push around on a plate as if that was equivalent to eating? 

_Do you know my name? Do you shout it when you come, when you’re alone in the rectory, in your bed I’ve never seen?_

_Love_, he’d called her and _A mhuirnín, darling, dear heart_ as if he were a spinster detective fond of knitting and dahlias, not rutting against her, watching her hips, her arse as she walked to the bathroom in the weak city moonlight. There were sounds he’d made as he’d kissed her, wordless, nameless sounds that meant he longed for her even when he had her, when he’d been willing to break his vows to taste her; they were something like her name but it wasn’t what she was called. Did he know and think it didn’t suit her? Or did he think if he said it, if he cried it aloud with his lips against her throat, she’d know something she shouldn’t? If he’d ever said it, could he have walked away? He walked away without it except that she heard it in her dreams every night, the sibilance of the s, his soul’s breath behind the final a.

_Why does suffering scare you less than recognition? Why do you think grief wants an end?_

Christ, if there had been more than one night, she might have been able to ask the questions to his bare back, the loveliness of his neck. To his soft, filthy mouth and his soft, filthy eyes. She might have been able to get an answer.

And if she hadn’t gotten an answer, there would have been a bloody fucking sign for her. The gleaming golden eyes of a panting vixen at her window. The headless statue tipped over, unchipped, untarnished. Meant to be held, held onto.

**Author's Note:**

> A sort of musing on the questions I was left with after the series finale. I haven't decided on Fleabag's name but I have an idea.
> 
> The title is from S2E5.


End file.
